That’s a serious charge. And while Supervisor John Venditto naturally dismissed the Justice Department’s challenge – suggesting systematic racism in Oyster Bay is “plain wrong,” the supervisor said – the allegations should be taken very seriously by town officials.

At issue is the town’s policy of giving preferential housing-program treatment to town residents. This does not sound inherently racist, but federal officials cite a natural barrier against minorities, since the town’s population is overwhelmingly white. The most recent U.S. Census data reports that 85 percent of Oyster Bay’s residents are white and only 2.3 percent are black.

Venditto insists the housing programs help young and elderly town residents find housing that might otherwise be beyond their reach.

This isn’t the first time such claims have been levied against Nassau County’s easternmost town. The New York State Division of Human Rights reached out to Oyster Bay in 2009 about its housing practices; the federal Justice Department came knocking that year, too.

Venditto notes the town cooperated with those investigations “in every way imaginable,” but now here Oyster Bay is again, defending allegations of institutionalized bigotry.

It’s no secret Long Island is racially segregated. National surveys consistently rank Nassau and Suffolk among the top 5 most segregated regions in the country. Whether the federal government’s new lawsuit holds merit or not, the allegations themselves are yet another black eye for an island that can’t seem to shake the segregation stigma.